EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been corrected to show that Jim Rogers, owner of Doc Neely’s Gun Shop, does not plan to import assault weapons for customers after an assault weapons ban goes into effect. The original version said that he did.
North Olympic Peninsula gun store proprietors Jim Rogers and Travis Stoken knew it was just a matter of time before they would be prevented from selling assault weapons.
That prospect appeared inevitable with the passage this week of Substitute House Bill 1240, which bans the manufacture, distribution, importation and sale of semiautomatic assault firearms and conversion kits. Gov. Jay Inslee has pledged to sign the bill.
He and Attorney Gen. Bob Ferguson requested the legislation after several failed attempts at banning the weapons.
Rogers, 77, owner of Doc Neeley’s Gun Shop in Port Angeles, and Stoken, 37, owner of Stoken Arms & Outdoors in Port Townsend, were sold out of assault firearms months ago. They never replenished their stock.
“Since this bill was introduced [in January], we’ve sold hundreds of them in a very short amount of time, a couple of months,” Stoken said Thursday.
Rogers said Wednesday he still gets inquiries from local residents to acquire assault weapons in other states. But he won’t fulfill the orders due to the 1240’s immediate effective date.
“More people are wanting them now, and I’m telling them they’re not going to get them,” Rogers said.
The bill outlaws the sale of 62 classifications and models of assault-style firearms and various features “so that if new weapons come out they will also be covered,” including all forms of AK-47s, according to the legislation, which lists the specific banned firearms, and the bill report, both at leg.wa.gov. Violating the law is a gross misdemeanor.
Stoken and Rogers took wait-and-see attitudes on the economic impact of the restriction, saying it was hard to measure.
Both rely on regular customers including target shooters, hunters, and collectors, and did not appear overly concerned about 1240 affecting their stores. But they said it will have an impact elsewhere.
“A lot of the guns that they’re banning will [hurt] handgun competition, which is a large portion of everybody’s hobby,” Rogers said.
“We’re not big on assault weapons. We’ll have at most, one or two in here at a time. They’re fun to shoot, fun to compete with, they’re fun to do all sorts of things.”
Rogers said assault rifles are used for target practice and hunting, that they help keep down the ground squirrel population in agricultural areas such as Idaho, where his son lives, and where pests eat alfalfa “right to the dirt.”
Stoken said the ban resulted in the loss of about 40 percent of the inventory he would carry.
“We will have to pivot and try something else. It’ll be interesting to see what we can come up with in terms of merchandise that we can still sell here,” he said..
“I don’t foresee any immediate issues with our business status because we have a healthy clientele.”
For Stoken, a watershed moment was July 1, the effective date of statewide legislation that prevented him from selling ammunition magazines with more than 10 rounds. Purchases of assault-style weapons dropped to 5 percent of gross sales.
“Everything changed in July,” Stoken said.
Rogers said many of his clients are gun collectors.
Gun regulators “need to enforce the laws that are on the books,” he said.
Rogers reached into a file cabinet and grabbed a handful of dozens of rejected pistol applications.
“These are all the people that have been denied, and no one’s ever been prosecuted,” he said. “There are probably a couple hundred here.”
An exemption allows firearms dealers to sell or transfer assault weapons acquired before Jan. 1 to outside the state for 90 days after 1240 becomes law.
The bill prohibits the sale of conversion kits, parts that can be used to assemble an assault weapon, semiautomatic pistols that can accept a detachable magazine and semiautomatic rifles with an overall length of less than 30 inches.
It excludes antique firearms and firearms that are manually operated by bolt, pump, lever or slide action.
Exceptions also include the authorization for licensed firearms manufacturers to import, distribute and offer for sale assault weapons to persons not living in Washington state.
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Legislative Reporter Paul Gottlieb, a former senior reporter at Peninsula Daily News, can be reached at cpaulgottlieb@gmail.com.
